Raise your voice. Rebel. Make a change. Love. Have good sex.

You know that feeling when you’re really asleep, but you feel awake? Halfway between sleeping and waking? You feel paralyzed. And you’re begging for someone to kick you so you wake up cause you don’t have the strength to do it on your own. You try moving your mouth. Your lips. You scream on the inside. You want to wake up. But nothing you do seems to work.

That’s what’s happening to me right now.

I can feel it coming. It’s right on time. The nightmare I have every other week.

Blood on the kitchen floor. A gun in her hand. My 13 year old self screaming at the top of my lungs. Calling for help. Knocking on the neighbors’ doors so they can do something to help me. Leaving bloody footsteps behind me. Grabbing the phone with my shaky hands and calling dad. Only to realize that he’s dead.

That was the day I lost all my innocence. I went from 13 to 20 in a gunshot. Taking care of her. Being the parent. Until I could it no more. Until it was just too much.

It’s weird. This nightmare I’m having is actually better than the crippling feeling I have right before it. It’s actually soothing. I’ve seen this nightmare so many times before that it feels normal. I know exactly what’s gonna happen. I’ve seen it all before. How can it be a nightmare if I’ve lived it before?

I can feel something on my leg. Must be Bisi. She can probably hear my meaningless mumblings and is trying to wake me up. It works. I wake up all sweaty, with my right leg cramped, and I look at her. She knows I’m in pain.

“Yep. Her again”.

Bisi was there that day. She probably saw more of it than I did. I wonder if she has nightmares about it too. Do animals dream anyway?

I take a sip of water from the cup I always keep next to my bed and realize it’s only 7 pm. Weird, it’s so dark outside. I was so tired after I came home from the HIV test that I slept all afternoon. Now I have to study and get some homework out of the way. That is if I can focus; Joe is still not replying to my messages and isn’t pickin up the phone. But I have to.

I take a hot long shower to refocus my energy.

As I dry myself, the door rings. It’s the electricity man coming to collect his bill.

“67,000 Liras”.

“Yalla, one second”.

I get my wallet and start lookin for money. Then my wallet falls on the floor. Also flying to the floor are three 500 lira coins and two condoms. The poor 60 year old bends over and helps me pick up my shit, only to realize they’re condoms.

I grab my wallet. “Here’s 70,000”.

“So you need 3,000 from me”, he replies.

“No need”. The man’s been through enough already. “Thank you”, I say.

He calls the elevator, wait for him to get in, then go back inside and wear some socks.

Then the door knocks again. Who could it be? Is it the electricity man wanting to borrow a condom?